Next stop: more go.

However and wherever you go, Metro is planning, building, fixing and expanding to give you more choices for your journey. Four rail projects in construction, nine new corridor studies, highway bottleneck fixes and a shiny new bike fleet are all part of our toolbox as we create new ways for LA County to Go Metro.

Metro enhanced the quality of transit environments for customers through its multi-faceted, award-winning arts and design programs. Innovative visual and performing arts programming created meaningful connections among people, sites, and neighborhoods. Over 10,000 people participated in community engagement activities, tours, arts and cultural events, and millions of customers bene ted from our ¡eet and way nding design services.

We’re shaping LA County transportation for the future. We just broke ground on the rst Measure M mega project— the Gold Line light-rail extension to Claremont—and there’s more to come.

Harriet and Angeli, the massive tunnel boring machines, both staged dramatic breakthroughs on their respective projects—the Crenshaw/LAX corridor and the Regional Connector under downtown Los Angeles—taking the projects a giant leap closer to completion.

The West Santa Ana Branch light rail project, the Sepulveda Transit Corridor and Vermont BRT Corridor— three major Measure M projects that will impact millions of commuters each year—may be delivered sooner than planned through new partnerships proposed by private entities. These are just a few of the proposals submitted to Metro’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation.

The Metro system became safer with a new partnership designed to prevent crime by increasing the visibility of ocers and deputies on buses, trains and at stations. Members of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and Long Beach Police now can respond to incidents more quickly from their respective coverage areas, increasing response times from an average of 16 minutes to approximately five to six minutes.

ExpressLanes on the 110 and 10 freeways carried 41 million trips—an 8.5% increase over the previous year—demonstrating that commuters continue to seek choices in their travel modes.

Metro’s Communications team continued to foster community support for dozens of agency efforts, building on the award-winning public education effort which contributed to the passage of Measure M. Several high-pro le campaigns were launched this year, targeted to our many and varied audiences. We educated current riders on transit etiquette via a series of “Super Kind” short films, which collectively garnered some five million viewings. Our “Tap with Pride” campaign highlighted the hidden costs of fare evasion with a positive and informative presentation. And the “Next Stop” advocacy campaign made a big debut in 2017, as we employed a bright and bold design with forward-looking messaging to frame the agency’s construction projects and future plans for transforming LA County.

The I-5 North widening and HOV construction project continued to advance with the opening in March of the Empire Av/Buena Vista St Grade Separation and Providencia Bridge, which removes train-vehicle con¡icts and allows Metrolink trains to pass over both the Empire Av and Buena Vista St connections. Also opened in 2017 was an elevated Metrolink track that is signi cantly improving safety at Burbank crossings.

Our partner, Metrolink, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2017. Because of the vital importance of providing train-to-plane connectivity, we began construction of the Burbank Airport North Metrolink Station at the northwest corner of Hollywood Way and San Fernando Rd. The new station will, for the rst time, connect Hollywood Burbank Airport to the communities of San Fernando, Santa Clarita, and Antelope Valley via Metrolink to provide faster and more seamless connections.

Riders connecting with Metro now have three modern Metro Bike Hubs in which to securely stash equipment and bene t from services, including same-day repair, accessory sales and bike-related classes: Union Station, El Monte, and Hollywood.

As older adults turn more to transit, Metro’s On the Move Riders Program has become the go-to teacher for those who want to keep moving without driving. Older adults are the fastest growing segment of our population, and On the Move riders help others explore LA County and learn how to ride public transit the fun way.

The first mile/last mile connections to our bus and rail system are becoming easier. Metro’s new Bike Share system can now be used to rent bicycles for short-distance trips on 1,400 bicycles at 120 stations in downtown LA, the Port of Los Angeles, Pasadena and Venice. Future Bike Share expansions are planned for LA County.

Unless you are in a wheelchair, it’s dicult to understand the challenge of securing a chair on a moving bus. Last year, we provided special training for over 3,700 of our bus operators so that they could better help our more than 100,000 annual wheelchair bus patrons in need. We also began installing tactile pathways in new rail stations to make it easier for passengers with visual impairments to nd their way. For patrons with limited English, we improved our signage with the use of more pictograms and an expanded telephone translation service.

Metro is completing the I-710 South environmental process and identifying congestion relief projects for the heavily traveled goods movement corridor.

So you can get to where you need to go more comfortably, Metro this year added more than 50 new light rail cars (the beautiful yellow and silver ones) to the Blue, Expo and Gold Lines, and increased service on the Green Line from train arrivals every seven and a half minutes to six-minute headways through peak periods. And those new rail cars— assembled in Palmdale—created hundreds of jobs for local workers.

College, vocational and graduate students gained more mobility choices through the expansion of our U-Pass discount fare program.

Operating in a 24-hour city like Los Angeles, transit service has played an important role in keeping the city moving overnight for over 100 years. This year, we added to our “owl service” by launching 24/7 service on the popular Orange and Silver Lines.

To improve quality of life for Metro riders while at the same time giving the homeless a hand up, this spring Metro began a program that works with homeless individuals on our system. The teams include nurses, substance abuse counselors, mental health clinicians and formerly homeless persons. The goal is to offer referrals to services and housing that can help individuals escape homelessness and reserve our trains and buses for patrons.